Hetzler | Marfa is happy to announce Posters, a solo exhibition of works by Richard Prince, for the gallery’s annual presentation in Marfa, Texas. One of many foremost representatives of appropriation artwork, Richard Prince has been recontextualising photos and concepts from mass media, promoting and leisure for the reason that Seventies. Typically based mostly on merchandise of on a regular basis American tradition, his observe is considered one of ‘post-production’, which reworks cultural phenomena and their attributes to rewrite acquired narratives and our understanding of historical past.
The current exhibition brings collectively a big physique of Princes’ Poster works on canvas and on paper, created between 2014 and 2024. The big canvases present reproductions of ads for mailorder posters, as had been typically discovered in the back of magazines within the second half of the twentieth century. Vastly widespread on the time, these printed photos signify touchstones of early counter-cultural magazines, that are amongst Princes’ long-term pursuits. The motifs of political slogans and far-out artwork within the type of low cost posters are singled out and chosen by the artist. They discover their origins within the hippie head-shop tradition of the late ’60s, which additionally encompassed magazines, music and comedy information. Taped-off and blocked-out from the pages the place they had been listed, the photographs have been blown up in order that the ensuing works are far bigger than the unique posters.
Of their seemingly arbitrary choice, the poster photos mix anti-war slogans, reproductions of Fashionable artwork, graphic-design interpretations of nude {couples}, and footage of cats in generally humorously disparate compilations. The revolutionary angle of the late ’60s scholar protests is juxtaposed towards the self-indulgence of hippie tradition on this side-by-side illustration of widespread visible language.
If cultural attitudes are transported by on a regular basis imagery, then Prince makes them clear by making use of the main target of his creative observe to those supply supplies. Technique and implication are translated into totally different contexts and, along with his meticulous consideration to element, the artist decodes the communication of latest visible language and the concepts that are hid inside it.
